Towards climate embedded local planning in Sri Lanka to mitigate overheating : the case of Colombo.

Abstract

Sri Lanka attracted a ripple of developments since the aftermath of a civil war and Colombo, the capital city, is undergoing an unprecedented development phase which could permanently alter its land cover and thus contribute to urban overheating. This can have severe consequences on human health and the environment. The planning and building regulations of Colombo did not seem to capture any sense of this imminent threat despite the availability of proven urban warming mitigation strategies in the literature. The study takes a pragmatic approach in identifying the barriers and opportunities of implementing urban climate (UC) action through expert knowledge and judgement.

The thermal comfort (UTCI) was calculated and mapped for metadata obtained from 20 stations throughout Sri Lanka for the past 25 years, and a strong trend towards extreme heat stress was identified in Colombo. This, along with an analysis of thermal comfort for a typical street in Colombo on a maximum buildable configuration, were included as aiding materials to probe rich insight from professionals during in-depth interviews. A thematic analysis of the interviews suggests the following as key challenges – lack of continuity of climate initiatives despite socio-political changes, lack of guided local research for UC, fragmented planning institutions, the attitude of authorities and public, political interferences and integration of climate policy initiatives in a third world country which face other socio-economic challenges.

Based on the above, the study suggests a practical course of actions that can be developed as a framework for the successful integration of UC actions in the planning context.